Alan Powell – artist statement “A Location here on Earth”

     I have a long relationship with the forest and nature. As a child I spent my summers on my grandfather’s tree farm and as a teenage I learned wilderness survival in Canada. I have always struggled with the relationship between art and nature. I think it is important that as an artist I develop work about nature that goes beyond its physical beauty. Electronic technology has allowed me to develop ways of looking and experiencing the natural world using time, sound, and motion as the other qualities that define a natural space. I have also started to use the technologies of 3-D imaging and modeling as a way of documenting those experiences. When I go into the forest or into a wetland I use many sorts of electronic tools to document my experience. Each type of camera, lenses, and microphones record the environment in different ways. I use image and sound processing to enhance and personalize the documented experience. My video tapes no longer function as experimental narratives but electronic paintings that change over time. The work is now exhibited exclusively in galleries on looping media players on flat screens or projectors.
 I have been studying natural and man made environments. These have included the Catskill mountains, Fiji, South Africa wildlife preserves, New Jersey Boardwalks, and the mountain Lake Biological Station in the Blue Ridge Mountains. This is what 250 words looks like